Journey into Neverwinter Wood

Expedition

The party ventures in to Neverwinter Wood to investigate a location marked in the nearby mountains.

The party wakes and heads into the Neverwinter Wood. Their first day of travel brings them within a mile of Thundertree, where once again Venomfang's powerful wings beat in the night. Reginald hears an odd croaking and groaning in the night, but their sleep is uninterrupted.   The next day, the party enters Neverwinter Wood and follows the river all day to its heart. As the sun begins to set, Marri'Elle hunts for game and Trinn fishes for more food. Both are successful, but Trinn notices faint traces of an arcane magic that once tainted the fish, likely from residual magic exposed by the Cataclysm. Trinn prepares the fish and game and the party eats well near the river. Once again, the night passes without interruption.   The party wakes and continues their journey along the river through the forest. After half a day, they come across a section of the river with a natural bridge. They decide it's as good a place as any to cross and head over the bridge. As they do, they are ambushed but a number of colorful frog-like humanoids, and suddenly they know where the croaking they had been hearing was originating from. The frogs were not particularly strong, but they had a number of tricks that caught the party off guard by disorienting or causing odd urges. The toxins in their skins were quite unique. After the battle, Garret harvests some of the poisons from their corpses.   The party continues up the river and comes to a small clearing with 5 bodies of Neverwinter soldiers. Reginald and Trinn move forward to inspect, and the party is ambushed by fearsome looking orcs.   The orcs engage on the party as more show up from the trees. Trinn uses his time magic to slow many of the enemies, rendering them almost ineffective. As the party is chewing through their ambushers, Trinn's brother, Leo Gladius, shows up with a few other soldiers and helps them kill the orcs.   Leo tells the party that the dead soldiers were a scouting party of his and that he was hunting the orcs that killed them. He leads them back to his main camp a few hours north where a dozen other soldiers are waiting. Along the way, Trinn catches Leo up on his exploits in Phandalin. Leo tells him of his campaign to purge creatures from the forest and of all the monstrosities that they have seen over the last few weeks. When they arrive at Leo's camp, Leo offers to share a few deer that his soldiers caught for dinner and let them rest in his camp. Trinn notices Marri'Elle is avoiding him a bit and confronts her about it. Despite his efforts to help her reconcile, she was still upset about the incident in the courtyard. Trinn reassures her once more and falls asleep leaning on her shoulders.